Event Details

Since 1947, the Supreme Court has promised government neutrality toward religion, but in a nation whose motto is “In God We Trust” and which pledges allegiance to “One Nation under God,” the public square is anything but neutral—a paradox not lost on a rapidly secularizing America and a point of contention among those who identify all expressions of religion by government as threats to a free society. Yeshiva student turned secularist, Bruce Ledewitz seeks common ground for believers and nonbelievers regarding the law of church and state. He argues that allowing government to promote higher law values through the use of religious imagery would resolve the current impasse in the interpretation of the Establishment Clause. It would offer secularism an escape from its current tendency toward relativism in its dismissal of all that religion represents and encourage a deepening of the expression of meaning in the public square without compromising secular conceptions of government.

Table of contents

Preface
Introduction
I. The Establishment Clause Crisis
1. What We Say: The Supreme Court’s Promise of Government Neutrality Toward Religion
2. What We Do: The Failure of the Supreme Court to Redeem the Promise of Government Neutrality
3. Why Only the People and Not History Can Resolve the Establishment Clause Crisis
4. Proposals That Have Failed to Resolve the Establishment Clause Crisis
II. Using Government Speech and Higher Law to Resolve the Establishment Clause Crisis
5. The Establishment of Higher Law
6. Using Religious Symbols to Establish Higher Law
7. Applying Higher Law in Church/State Issues
III. Using the Higher Law Establishment Clause to Save Secularism
8. The Failure of Secularism under the New Atheism
9. The New New Secularism and the Higher Law
10. Is God a Universal Symbol?
11. The New Politics of Higher Law Secularism
Conclusion: Perfecting Democracy
Notes
Bibliography
Index